On Your Six
by nancystagerat
Summary: On your six, got your back, always right behind you. 'Til the end. Mustang/Hawkeye, soon-to-be a Royai100 drabble set.
1. Quirks

"_Romance_ novels?"

Havoc cranes his head around Hawkeye's shoulder, deciphering that the pink-bound book he'd glimpsed atop her papers that morning was, indeed, of the heaving-breasts-and-burning-loins variety.

"_You?_"

Hawkeye tucks a stray lock of hair behind her ear and crosses her legs at the knees, settling her book on her lap. She looks at him through her eyelashes, brows raised.

"Something wrong, Lieutenant?" she asks.

It sounds like a challenge. It looks like a challenge. And it's one challenge Havoc isn't particularly eager to press his luck with.

"She's still a woman, Jean," Mustang drawls from the doorway, and both sets of eyes snap up to meet their superior officer. "Sometimes women like that sort of thing."

Havoc rolls his eyes and grins the grin of a man who's just escaped a bullet in the ass. "Well, _gee_, Boss, that's news to me."

Mustang appreciates the sarcasm, smiling out of the corner of his mouth, but a sharp look from Hawkeye sends Havoc back to his desk muttering something about leave request forms needing filing.

The colonel leans against the wall beside her desk, peering at the couple on the pink-edged cover. "That's a new one."

"It's actually rather good." The First Lieutenant runs her finger down the page, finding her place without looking up. "It's very imaginative, as romance novels go."

"That good, eh?"

"I could lend it to you,_ sir_." The corner of her mouth twitches. "I'm sure those girlfriends you're never quite able to hold onto would appreciate it."

The colonel twists his lips out of a smile, feigning authority. "Why, Hawkeye, do I detect a hint of insubordination?"

"Oh, no, sir," she glances up from the book, completely deadpan. "Just speaking from observation."

"You wound me, Lieutenant," Mustang laughs and claps her on the shoulder, striding back into his office. Hawkeye stares down, unseeing, at her book, and smiles.


	2. Shirt

He wakes beside cold sheets in an empty bed, and all of a sudden his heart hammers in his head like the drums of war and he's alone. Standing again in that expanse of barren no-man's-land where the air is eerily still, and nothing, no wind, no sound, no stirring of breath—_no survivors_—nothing breaks the screaming in his head.

The darkness steals his breath like a punch in the gut.

His eyes don't work and without them, it seems that neither do his hands; they touch and touch and touch and come up empty, and the fear of being alone inside his head like this forever scares him more than even fumbling blindly through the rest of this godforsaken life.

The quiet rings so loudly in his ears he doesn't hear her until the bed depresses by his side, and Riza is holding his wrists and placing his hands on her body and he wants to reach for her face just to prove it to himself—but he stops his fingers halfway.

He fears he'll miss.

"Roy?"

Smaller, callused fingers meet his where they'd stalled between them, and he slides his hands up her arms and down her sides and somewhere at the back of his mind he realizes she's wearing his shirt. She must be—the fabric hangs loose around her, dwarfing the slender frame her uniform had never suited. And all at once his thoughts take off careening somewhere else.

There's nothing in his eyes to distract him from the memories behind them that flood and play more vividly than the heavy material in his hands, and Riza is twelve years old and tiny and wearing the coat of the sixteen-year-old boy her father had taught his secrets to.

His memories see her smile and it hurts him—more deeply than he'd ever imagined—that his eyes never will.

It's too overwhelming and the colors too saturated and the memory feels so much more real than the sightless future looming just out of reach of his hands.

"Roy," she says again. "Talk to me."

"It's alright," he lies. "I'm fine."


	3. Military

They are granted seven days' leave upon returning from war. It's the Führer's reward for "exemplary service at the front." Seven days of well-deserved rest before returning to duty.

It feels more like being quarantined.

_Send the broken soldiers away until they start to pull themselves together, _say the whispers;_ tug the leash to pull them back before feeling returns to battle-hardened hearts. _

Feeling returns faster than the State can exploit.

The first day, they neither speak nor see each other, holed up in their quarters like frightened mice hiding in the walls. The threat of human contact is too harsh for eyes unable to separate the sight of friends from killers.

The second day, he hears her nightmares through the wall between their rooms. Her fear is quiet, the whimpers in her throat small and weak as if even in sleep she refuses to impose herself upon him. He lies awake with his hand pressed to the wall.

The third day, they've found no healing wrapped in solitude, and so they talk a little. But only of trivial things.

The fourth day, they talk long into the night, until the air between them turns to something better suited to darkness and whispers and silence.

The fifth day, she catches him swipe his hand across glassy, bloodshot eyes. He lets her wipe away the moisture gathered at their corners. He kisses her, just once.

The sixth day, it's too much. Too fast, too strong, too charged with pain and heavy desire that's too hard to ignore. She spends the night in his bed, and he is terribly gentle with her. It's sweet and soft and swollen with things she should not be able to feel so soon after…everything. She doesn't understand why it makes her cry.

The seventh day, they pack their things, and swear _never again_.


	4. Legs

Roy Mustang is, always was, and always will be, a leg man.

Okay—maybe not "always was." But definitely "is" and "always will be."

He used to be, as Havoc would say, a "boob guy." For a number of his formative years (long before he learned what it took to be the suave lady-killer he is now), he was of the firm opinion that women with nice breasts did not need eyes. Where else on such a well-formed body would a man ever possibly need to look?

That is, until the day he learned that Riza Hawkeye owned thigh holsters.

He didn't exactly "learn" of them, either. It was more of a happening-upon-them in-a-way-he-never-should-have-seen.

Suffice it to say that his shapely First Lieutenant is rather fond of skirts on her days off. And that he is one man who will never object to a long slit up the side and a strong wind.

(The threatening gleam in her eye his gawping earned him, on the other hand, is another story altogether.)


	5. Distance

Two steps behind.

Just far enough to put safe distance between bodies. _And much too far away should safety fail them_, she fears, but that is a worry for another time.

She could reach out to touch him if she had the will for it, but willpower is something she finds in short supply when in his general vicinity. She still cringes at the thought of how little control she'd shown him under his own hands. Her own screaming haunts her at night, taunting and shrill in the silence in her head past the dull roar of flame and the hiss of it licking her skin.

_He begged you to be strong. You said you could control yourself. You swore it. You forced his hand. And you didn't even have the strength to bite your tongue._

_You asked him to destroy it. You knew what it would do to him. You knew. _

Two steps behind. Safe. Easy. Where he won't be able to see her if she falters.

She won't slip again. She _won't_. Not while she still holds his trust, to break it or keep as she pleases.

Sometimes, somewhere buried where she'll never have to face it, she wonders if they'll ever reach the point where she'd need the will to _prevent _herself from touching him. That, however, is also a worry for another time.


	6. Notice

She's done her nails pink, Falman notes. A subtle pink, of course, only slightly darker than the rose tint of her flesh, and slightly glossy. Not enough to look like her nails had been shellacked or anything—Lieutenant Hawkeye is nothing if not understated—but just enough to catch the eye for a second. Pretty.

Falman would think nothing of it—she _is_ the sole female on Mustang's team, after all—were it not so uncharacteristic of her. But none of the others seem to notice, and Hawkeye herself is just that—herself. At any rate, it isn't as if the color of a person's fingernails generally alters their behavior in any substantial way, and Falman drops the thought after a minute or two.

That is, until he catches Mustang glancing over at the Lieutenant more often than usual. If he had to guess, Falman would say the Colonel's sight line flickers across the room at her on average every four or five minutes, as opposed to his usual rate of only after every nine or so.

Hawkeye stands, brushes down the front of her uniform, and strides over to Mustang's desk, laying paperwork in front of him. She hands him a pen, pointing with her index finger in three places for him to initial. Mustang's eyes follow her fingertips where they trail along the page, and if Falman isn't mistaken, he could swear the barest hint of a smile ghosts across her face.

…_Interesting_.


	7. Slant

Something about her…Maes can't put his finger on what, but something about this girl affects Roy in a way he isn't sure he likes.

Maes wouldn't say that Roy is different around Riza, not in the least; the Hawkeye girl is good, damn good, and she'd earned her spot as one of the boys before most of the boys had even met her. But, christ, she's so young. She can't be more than nineteen. And when she's around Roy gets this…sharp way of carrying himself. There's a harder set to his jaw, a jaggedness to everything he says, and Maes can't tell if it's from resentment or an urge to protect her.

He's not sure which he'd prefer. She seems haunted enough herself, and Mustang has enough on his shoulders without him adding the Hawkeye girl's misery to the pile. Her mental state isn't Roy's responsibility, regardless of his having spent half her childhood under her father's roof. Years between them should loosen the ties of the past, and Maes hopes to high heaven she'll either cut them herself or pull them so tight they won't be able to tell which burdens belong to whom.

She's a good kid, and a good soldier. And from what Maes' heard from Roy, she'd been a good friend to him once. But only time will tell if friendship will be thick enough to keep them both alive.


	8. Languid

He toys with the ends of her hair and it slides through his fingers like liquid.

"I like that you've let it grow," he murmurs, leaning over so his lips will form the words against her shoulder. She stirs in her sleep, and Roy waits until she settles back into dreaming before he'll dare allow his tongue let slip his thoughts again.

He wants to kiss her more than any man should have right to want anything. Her face is buried in the pillow, arms hugging it to her cheek, and he might hate himself a little if he woke her up just for his own selfish pleasure. Riza never seems this relaxed when she's awake, the muscles of her back loose and released beneath his palm. And he supposes it's largely his fault. He's never been the easiest man to look after, and his newfound dependency isn't exactly lightening her load.

But she chose her life just as he'd chosen his, and if she hadn't Roy would never have imposed himself to such an extreme degree. It doesn't even feel very much like imposition anymore, despite how he's almost completely useless on his own.

He'd expected to be exceedingly ashamed of leaning on her so much more than he used to. He'd expected agony while learning how to make do without his eyes. It _is_ agony, to a point, when every day some new mundane thing becomes next to impossible sightless. But Riza Hawkeye has the patience of a saint. And at least the blind do less paperwork.

_And,_ he thinks, smiling as he dips his head again to kiss the nape of her neck, _lovemaking blind is like nothing he's ever felt before in his life_. He strokes his fingers down the valley of her spine. She sighs in her sleep.

Compared to what he could have lost, he can live without his eyes.


	9. Teeth

"God_dammit_, dog!"

Hayate obviously doesn't understand the sentiment and barks once, setting the mangled remains of a Pyrotex glove at Colonel Mustang's feet. His tail thumps against the tile, tongue lolling out, looking extremely pleased with himself, and Roy bristles; there's a piece of what was once a transmutation circle caught in the little dog's teeth.

"I told you not to leave your gloves where he can reach them, sir," Hawkeye chimes from her desk, with more than a little _I-told-you-so_ creeping around the edges of the words. Havoc sniggers behind a manila folder, Fuery shoots an anxious glance from the puppy to his superior and back, and Breda, not surprisingly, is nowhere to be found.

Maes, however, is laughing from the doorway.

"_You said you'd _trained_ it, Lieutenant_," Mustang grinds through clenched teeth. It takes the majority of his willpower _not_ to give Hayate a swift kick in that happy tail of his.

"He's still a puppy. Puppies chew." And with that she whistles, unruffled by the whole affair, and the little dog's ears perk towards her. Shaking the last remnants of destroyed gloves from his fur, he pads meekly back to his master's side.

"Just…keep it out of my office."

Riza nods once and Roy strides back to his desk, Hughes at his heels.

"You could've just closed the door, you know," Maes says once they're out of earshot of the team, glancing from Roy to the Lieutenant and back, "or would it _block the view_?"

"Hughes, there's a reason they call_ dogs_ 'man's best friend,' you know."

Maes grins and leans against the side of the desk, whistling for the dog, and in true puppy fashion, Hayate bounds over wagging his tail so hard his rear end could've taken off. "Just calling 'em like I see 'em, chief."


	10. Unannounced

She's about to pull the hem of her favored black shirt down over her midriff when a set of arms snakes around her waist and makes the aforementioned activity rather difficult.

"I don't remember giving you a key," she grits, miffed by the liberties he's taken, but not quite enough to reach for the pistol on the sidebar. Or push him out of her way.

"Had one made," Roy drawls against the side of her neck. He hasn't shaved, and smiles at her shiver when his stubble abrades the hinge of her jaw. "Figured it'd be easier than waiting for you to let me in all the time."

"That was one night."

"It was twenty-three degrees outside."

"I'd gone two full days without sleep."

"It was snowing."

"And I was off-duty—"

"Extreme wind chill."

"—for the first time in over a month. Forgive me for not jumping to attention the second the doorbell rang."

"…It's still easier."

"You are insufferable."

"But you wouldn't have me any other way."

She turns in his arms and kisses the smug smile off his face. "Wouldn't I?"


	11. Gravity

The door creaks slightly as it swings shut behind her, and Mustang startles like a rabbit from a gunshot. Dark purple shadows sit under his eyes, worse than she's seen in months; the ghosts may be his, but, God, they scare her, too, and she fears for her country all the more each time she's witness to its aspiring ruler losing resolve.

She's brought him tea in hopes to calm his nerves, not much differently than she does every afternoon. But today, she's waited until the rest of the team has trickled out for the evening. They don't need to share the darker things that trip their fearless leader and remind him how very small a man he really is.

She bends to set the saucer on his desk, but before she can straighten again he grabs her wrist and holds it to his face, and his breath is warm and steady but his tired eyes are closed. Her pulse quickens beneath his lips.

"My hell doesn't have to be yours."

He leaves the words against her skin like a brand, even though he already knows her answer. To anyone else it would be cautionary, a scare tactic meant to protect. But with Riza, it's less a warning than it is a way of marking her as his.

_All his. Only his. Invisibly._

"Forgive me," she says; it's a fight to keep her fingertips from skimming his cheek, "but by now I don't think we were ever meant to be separate, in hell or otherwise."

His fingers tighten on her wrist and then release her.

"It might be your funeral, Lieutenant."

"Then so be it."


End file.
